Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Napolitano staying through confirmation

The biggest question regarding the official news that Governor Napolitano is going to leave to take the post as Secretary of Homeland Security is when she is going to leave office in Arizona.

Based on her official statements, it looks as if she is going to stay until she is confirmed, leaving her as Governor until late January or early February. This would allow her to give a final state of the state speech touting her accomplishments and keep her in the middle of the budget debate. She will continue to offer her own budget solutions despite being faced with an even more conservative legislature this time around.

The fall out of this decision has raised some rancor in the conservative community:

The biggest thing to watch is how the new legislators treat the presence of Napolitano if she does indeed decide to stick around for the first few weeks of the new legislature. There are two ways that this is likely to go: they could avoid her until she leaves, or they could fire up several of the immigration of the bills of the past and take a run at passing them on to her so her immigration position is more solidified before she goes on to run Homeland Security.